December 20 Advent IV
Mary has always been a fascinating and mysterious figure to me. Perhaps she is to you. Mary has many faces – some from scripture,
some from conjecture, some from our hopes and dreams of what it means to be touched by God. We think of her alternately as a young girl visited by an angel, object of devotion, scandalous to her bethrothed and forgiven by him (that tells us something about both of them, doesn’t it?)
Mary, theotokos, means mother of God, Mary, queen of heaven, fair lady, and the list goes on. Mary is displayed in marble, bronze, oils, plaster of Paris, card stock, and even plastic, most often gazing up to heaven or sitting with a haloed child on her knee.
Suspend all of those pictures of Mary for now, if you will, and think of her as she is portrayed in today’s gospel. She was about 13 and had just been told she is pregnant. She knows her cousin Elizabeth is pregnant—Elizabeth who hoped to bear a child for many years – her biological clock hasvalready run down. One of them too young, the other too old, by our reckoning. Nevertheless, they have a lot in common.
Mary goes off to the hill country to see Elizabeth, to share her joy, her questions, her fears, and her wonder with someone who will understand what is happening to her — if anyone can.
Picture the scene with Mary and Elizabeth laughing and singing in the country side. These two simple women are celebrating their extraordinary pregnancies. Baby John confirms, Elizabeth blesses, and so it is—Mary accepts this miraculous gift – this visitation from God.
With humility, without arrogance, they celebrate their blessings.
Their laugher and singing greet the unexpected choices God has made.
For everyone else it is outrageous, unexpected, and out of the proper order of things for God to choose little known unimportant women to bring about his entrance on earth. The Messiah is slipping into the world in a thoroughly unexpected way through the last person anyone might have chosen. The priest has been silenced. Mary sings. Mary, without so much a Mrs. before her name, much less any other title or religious standing.
It is so very like no one but God, to choose this young, unwed girl—a
thoroughly marginal person in her culture—to proclaim one of the most important prophetic words in Scripture. Charles Campbell, in Feasting on the Word, calls it “extraordinary: young, pregnant Mary gives voice to a song for the ages, a song that invites us beyond our realistic expectations and our numb imaginations.”[2] Mary accepts the mysteries of God and she has the humility to sing “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”
Last week I was sent a puzzling piece of writing in which the author called Jesus’s birth in a stable “shameful.” Jesus’ birth was not shameful. God was showing forth humility. Jesus’ life on earth would begin and end with humility. His birth was a sign that God favors rich and poor alike. Our ideas of favor may run to riches and power, but God visits any prepared heart.
It is an upside down world that Mary proclaims. The movers and shakers are spectators — if it comes to their attention at all. The good news spreads slowly, if at all. Herod hears it from the Wise Men after their long journey from the east which took a couple of years. Herod paid attention, but not because their news was good to his ears – because they described the child as a future ruler of God’s people Israel.
This miracle was happening and few people in the country with any position or power knew or believed. Perhaps they dismissed the stories about Jesus’ birth as a tale born in someone’s imagination. Wouldn’t their messiah would be born in a high place? not a stable!
Hans Christian Andersen wrote some fairy tales to show how children can see through the social order to the truth when adults either can’t see it or won’t admit it.
When he was a child Andersen stood in a crowd waiting with his mother to see King Frederick VI. When the king made his appearance, Andersen cried out, “Oh, he’s nothing more than a human being!”
His mother tried to silence him by crying, “Have you gone mad, child?”
Andersen later wrote a fairy tale, which seems to be based on his childhood experience. You probably know the tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” In “The Emperor’s New Clothes” two weavers hatch a scheme to trick the emperor. They promise the Emperor a new suit of clothes made of the very finest, most beautiful fabric that has ever been woven. The fabric, they say, also has a special quality — it is invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or who is just “hopelessly stupid.”
When the suit is made and draped about his body, the emperor cannot see the cloth, but he pretends he can for fear of appearing unfit to be emperor or stupid; his ministers do the same. They think the emperor can see. After all, he is the emperor! The people who have heard all about these new clothes and they line the streets to see the king process in his carriage. When he arrives, they don’t want to appear stupid — they go along with everyone else who says they can see the new clothes.
But a child steps up to the Emperor’s carriage and says, “He is wearing nothing at all.” The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession.
Jesus cautioned his disciples and followers to listen to children. They can see through the complicated and sometimes the convoluted systems we adults devise. So can faithful women like Elizabeth who are condemned by the religious system. Many people were praying and looking for a messiah, but it was Mary and Elizabeth who had the humility to let God to surprise them.
In our collect today, we prayed our consciences would be cleared in God’s daily – daily – visitation. I wonder what good news we might be missing if we expect God to come to us in the structures of our own making, or what might we hear if we expect the unexpected of God?
When we pray to hear the messages of God, we are praying for humility.
Humility shuts down our defenses to God’s word and enables to rejoice in the unexpected ways of God. In the world Jesus was to herald, the playing field would be level among the rich and the poor, the high up and the low down. God remembered promising mercy and entered a violent world to pronounce a new world order grounded in humility.
In the fifth century, St. Benedict formed a community of men to live inways counter to the prevailing culture of the power and violence of their time. The Rule of Benedict guided this community of men and has been adopted by the church as its spiritual discipline. It’s prominence has waxed and waned through the centuries, but has never lost its place entirely. Humility is a major thrust of Benedict’s teaching. Humility was perhaps one Jesus’ most baffling characteristics and we have continued through the centuries to resist it.
Humility requires of us the ability to learn from others, to live in community, and to accept personal limitations. Human limitation is the gift that clears our conscience and relates us to God, to the world, to ourself, and to others.
Mary was blessed not only because of her faith, but because she had the humility to listen and receive God’s unsought for blessing. Mary’s gift to us this Christmas is an invitation to let go of our pride and accept our personal limitation confident that God provides the way, the wisdom, and the will to receive whatever comes our way with her spirit of joy and song in our hearts. Amen.